h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Further thoughts:

I suppose that part of the defensive strategy against more Lynmouth disasters in the wet-West is more aforestation of those interiors that have been denuded of their natural forest cover so that rainwater rushes off and down precipitately.

And pondering further on my crazy "HighSpeed sledges":
(a) on the basis of the way things developed with railways initially someone might try an entertainment attraction with a convenient stretch and adapted snowmobiles.
(b)locks might be circumvented by "shoots" which would impel downward traffic by the force of gravity, the amount of momentum generated being determined by the weight. Normal momentum could be based on much the same technology as hovercraft.

Cass

Pigeons! That's the solution.

Each house to keep it's own doocot. Tie each pigeon's leg to your house by long, sturdy lengths of twine. When the flood waters start to rise, simply make a loud noise and the pigeons will lift your house to a safe height.

When it doesn't flood they can double as a source of food or an alternative to e-mail for less urgent messages. And you can use the crap to fertilise your cabbages.

One major problem with your idea of doing away with a centralised sewerage network and letting everyone deal with their own (American survivalist fashion)...

There are just too many of us... If you're talking about soak-aways, then the number of people within a typical modern urban area would just saturate the ability of the soil to remove any toxins... And it's all very well looking back to the way they did things before the introduction of sewer systems, but you've also got to remember that the streets stunk, were knee deep in human and animal excrement and people were dropping dead of cholora on a daily basis.

Hmm. Yeah - and I guess it would only get worse with all the pigeons.

Carry all the shite away on hi-speed sleds. Drawn by pigeons. (Hey! We've got to give them something to do now they're unemployed!)

We've still got the original problem with flooding to contend with. How about if we were to fit a giant balloon under every house and in case of flooding we could fill it with methane generated by all the...no, wait...the pigeons have carried that away by sled.

Hmm. Tricky.

Whisky

But when you say "that there are just too many of us"-- you are probably commenting upon the consequence of the massive growth of urbanisation during the Nineteenth Century, which produced social and environmental problems of a scale that could not be handled in traditional ways..

Homes needed to be much more complex than simple country cottages for various reasons including "promiscuity" in the Victorian sense of too many people squeezed into too small a space. It was this that made the impact of industrial living so disastrous for "the working class" who, on the face of it, thought that they would be better off with industrial wages designed to attract them into the industrial towns.

The basic flaw was the argument of Adam Smith, as it was applied, that Society should be destroyed in order to create as much wealth as possible, because then the wealth could be used to cure the ills of Society.

In fact by the end of the Victorian era wealth was being used to create the modern world of commuting in which scarce resources are being used to create two domiciles for just about everyone- except pensioners like me (but some of us have two houses). One place for work or study and another place "to call Home", with in addition further scarce resources being used to transport everyone from one place to the other at least five days a week.

Recent inner city developments have tried to regenerate some inner city areas as places fit to call Home as well as work in, but in many ways they work because they can now feel almost like villages or islands.

It may well be that a "Big Society", which does not need a huge State apparatus taking up 40% of GDP, will involve returning economic activity back to the Human Scale, as envisaged by Dr. Schumacher in "Small is Beautiful. A Study of Economics as if People Really Mattered" (1973)..

But as I wrote to him at the time, the problem with his "Intermediate Technology" concept was that the Developed World would not buy it, and the leaders of the Developing World would not either- because politically (apart from anything else) it would have left them open to accusations of accepting a Second Best and inferior system, something that post-imperial populations would have been resentful about.

Since 1973, however, the potential for small-scale, highly skilled and hi-tech production has greatly increased. My brother for example assembling prototype and experimental circuitry on the desk in his living room in an up-to-date version of the "Putting Out System".. He thus did the circuitry for the initial radio broadcasting of Parliament and his whole weeks work would usually fit into a small cardboard box that he took to the firm that gave him his blueprints to work on the next week.

Cass

>>The basic flaw was the argument of Adam Smith, as it was applied, that Society should be destroyed in order to create as much wealth as possible, because then the wealth could be used to cure the ills of Society.

Careful now!

Adam Smith pointed out that the focus on wealth creation would have an impact on society. He did not advocate that the focus *should* be on wealth creation at the expense of society. No friend of Hume would ever be likely to confuse and Is and an Ought. And he recognised that for ills cured, others might caused.

Edward the Bonobo

I know you like to skim my posts but I did say "as it was applied".

Cass

Fair enough.

Now what about my pigeons idea?

Sounds a bit doo-lally.



Oh, is that taxi for me?

(that might need translating. )

Actually - you could mitigate some of the sewage problems by keeping fewer pigeons. Instead of trying to lift your whole house off, just keep enough to attach to yourself and save yourself from the water. And all your furniture. It you use homing pigeons they'll even deliver the furniture back to you afterwards. I reckon.

Or you could use dolphins. Train lots of dolphins to carry houses.

Edward the Bonobo

Your pigeons idea was a flight of fancy too far even for me.. And is it not pigeon-loft or dove-cote?.. And there are precedents for finding Dove's useful in times of flood.

I used to show my classes a really depressing documentary series called something like "Wasteland" that featured a family wasting its life away in the ghost-town that survived a part of the NE steel industry. The range of pigeon-lofts was the equivalent of a men's hut in some tribal village, and a teenage son was being initiated to the rites and rituals of just letting life pass you by.

Cass

It's dookit. The same word is used for what you might call a pigeonhole.

I dunno...I think we should pursue this pigeon idea. There's be byproducts, too - like stuffing for duvets and...er...other things. Probably.

dookit

Why don't we take all the stale bread from the supermarkets in Scotland, dook it into the Lochs then load it onto lorries for transportation to the drought and famine-hit areas of Kent?

Genius!

And we can use any leftover crumbs to feed the pigeons.

Actually, though - I've a better idea. Yes. Remember Cass's Mulberry Harbour idea? Well we can sink concrete reefs around the coast, farm aquatic sponges and...

Scotland could end up becoming a global exporter of water. I knew all this dreich must be good for something.

If we breed the sponges really big we can roll them down canals.

On an unrelated theme, someone on my F/b posted on plans to grow meat in test tubes. We've been wondering whether it will be called Tube Steak.

Edward

It would be a diversification from pisciculture. (a la Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull fame)

Cass

Oh, he's far from the only person who cultivates pish. I know several several fish farmers in the Highlands. One of them is a tractor driver. No, seriously. They load JCBs onto landing craft and use them to scoop out the food. (Although he likes to tell tourists that he plants the fish. Tail down, obviously).

If they used giant sponges they could soak up all the sea and the fish would be there for the picking.